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The real war on Easter is being conducted by those right-wing Christians who insist on calling Easter “Resurrection Sunday” because, you see, “Easter” honors various pagan deities (Ēostre, Ishtar, etc., etc.). You know, like “Thursday” honors Thor. We need bumperstickers that say “Happy Easter!” to get in their faces! Remember: the Easter Bunny died for our sins!

Zeno has a point. Easter has hijacked a lot of pagan symbols of spring and rebirth. It’s the christian purists who have declared a war on Easter-as-we-know-it. I’m content to let the day come and go if the restaurants weren’t so crowded and so many stores in my neighborhood were closed.

I love how they think it’s horrible for ‘secularists’ to protest and boycott ‘Christian’ businesses, but he revels in the idea that ‘Christians’ were able to force stores to allow their employees to say “Merry Christmas”. Plus the litany of so-called abuses that Christians are having to ‘endure’, which sound remarkably like the kinds of abuses that those same Christians have been inflicting upon non-Christians for the last 2000 years!

“Traditional People.” Who are those folks? Let me guess…Good white Christian people who just love themselves some Jebus? I’ll make sure to shoot any heathen bunny that might try to lay some eggs in my yard. Silly rabbit, mammals don’t lay eggs. Those that do ain’t no true mammal.

Oh the humanity! Imagine living in a horrible Scandinavian place where minorities can’t be criticized! And what will Jeebus say when he finds out that his sacred bunny and chocolate eggs no longer have their traditional, religious meaning? I have to go now, as a Canadian I spend my Fridays trying to getting pregnant so I can run around having abortions whenever I want.

Look, we all know that this (the USA) is a Christian nation so I think it is well beyond time to get rid of the pagan influence that sits upon ever day of our lives — the names we use for the days of the week. They are horribly offensive and are helping lead our nation down into a pit of abyss. Over the centuries these names, and the meaning behind them, have weakened our national resolve and have led to a general decay in our morality.

…

oldname: Sunday
proposed New Name: Day of Our Lord
reasoning: let’s just be honest with everyone; that is what Sunday is so why obfuscate the fact with foul pagan symbology?

oldname: Monday
newname: MonkDay

…

oldname: Saturday
newname: SaintsDay

There is no way anyone could be opposed to these suggestions so I say we get working on getting these legally changed. Maybe then God really will Bless America again!

What is with Bill O’Reilly’s confusion with Easter being a _Judeo_Christian thing? It’s a christian thing. It’s not part of Judeo-christian tradition since Jews don’t celebrate easter they celebrate passover – and no they are not “kinda the same thing”. Easter is purely a christian thing… except it’s not…. its a pagan thing.

I was raised without religion and as a child I celebrated Easter without any idea that it was supposed to be connected to something in a Christian church. It was a spring celebration and that was that. I remember my mom buying the Easter egg kit which had the decals you could put on the died eggs: bunnies, chicks, flowers … and then some weird configuration of something I didn’t recognize — a large cross with a giant lily twined around it. “What’s this?” I think I was probably told it was for something our family didn’t do and maybe a little bit about what it meant. As I recall I put it on the eggs anyway because the giant lily was cool.

I didn’t even hear about the “Easter story” till I was older. I knew about the Baby Jesus story in Christmas (though not its implications) — but the crucifixion was simply off my radar. Why wouldn’t it be? Bunnies, chickies, baby lambs, tulips, chocolate candy, pretty hats, basket hunts — what the hell kind of connection does all this have to do with someone purportedly named Jesus who is purportedly the son of a purported God who purportedly dies as some sort of substitutional honor killing to avenge the purported human sin of not being sufficiently pure? “Spiritual rebirth” my ass. If you live in the Midwest then celebrating spring for its own sake makes perfect sense.

Keep the Estre in Easter. Good Friday is a Christian holiday: Easter has jack shit to do with Jesus unless you want to celebrate it that way. And I don’t.

I was also amused by O’Reilly’s statement that “Easter is a good holiday, you don’t have to believe in Jesus…” Does he realize that that is a wonderfully secular statement?

Bingo. Great tactic, O’Reilly — push Easter as a holiday that has nothing to do with Jesus. Then watch what happens to your victory.

So is Bill-O going to try arguing that businesses should be doing the traditional Easter greeting of “he is risen” “he is risen indeed”? Welcome to Walmart, he is risen, would you like a shopping cart?

We all know, thanks to Matt Stone and Trey Parker, that Peter Cottontail is the real first head of the Church. The Papacy has been hiding this secret for hundreds of years. Now we have a fraud in Vatican City who knows that his power hangs from a thread. A thread that will be snapped by the sharp ever growing incisors of our true Pope. We need to get back to the real traditions of Easter if we are going to survive the secularization of our sacred traditions and values. Hippitus Hoppitus.!

Amusing that it’s “Traditionalism” that is under attack, not religion…per se. Traditionalism? Cue Tevye, I think we need a song here. Traditionalism = the irrational clinging to a fantasy past. Just what we need to solve our problems.

@ raven #25 — “Not to mention that there are two creation myths and the order differs between them.”

I recently learned that some Bible scholars find other creation myths scattered around the books, not just the usual two. For example, the author* of one book sees Eve’s incantation in Genesis 4 (“With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man”) as a remnant of various Mesopotamian creation myths in which the goddess Tiamat is the creator.

* I think it was Randel Helms in The Bible Against Itself or perhaps Tim Callahan’s The Secret Origins of the Bible.

Just doesn’t work for me. EyeEyeday just sounds too nautical and IVday? I don’t like needles. If you use the Latin words, it just sounds French or Spanish and you just know BillO doesn’t like either of them.

If the cross is a generic symbol, I don’t see why the resurrection (two r’s really? guess I don’t use that word very often) of a particular savior isn’t a generic symbol too?….haha I could be a Supreme Court Justice – If I just didn’t care.

And dubocn74: tell us more about this Canada Friday set aside for trying to get ‘pregnant’. Practice, Practice and nobody wearing anything but hats and condoms, I’m guessing??!!

Yeah, if you really wanna emphasize how much of a Christian holiday Easter is, you should babble about Easter bunnies and Easter eggs non-stop. Really, it’s probably in the bible, a funny crossing of platypus and rabbit that lays coloured eggs.

And did I miss something or is there really no mention of Jesus and his Zombie version in this seven-minute piece at all?

I’m always baffled that Christians keep on talking about some of the most obviously forced-upon “Christian” holidays like they are supposed to be the essence of their religion or something like that. If you want to protect “your” holidays, talk about Pentecost. Yeah, nobody gives a fuck about that (or even knows what supposed to have happened then), but actually, you probably can’t get any more “Judeo-Christian” than that.

Oh, and those evil Scandinavian countries… Funnily enough there isn’t any “war” on Easter over there, in fact, Easter is celebrated with something special (at least I think this is also traditionally done there, as it is in Germany): Easter fires all over the country. Granted, that’s also more a pagan tradition than anything else, but…

But you can’t criticise minorities, so they have to be evil. Seriously, what does he even want to say with that? Abortion is “but babies!”, drugs is… well, evil, I guess. So criticising minorities is “but free speech”? Well then…

I’ve instructed the disbursing agents to throw in a grab bag of psychedelic agents, as well as oxycontin and meth to keep the conservatives happy. Also, a coupon book for free abortions any time you want one!

Which Easter, the Western one or the Eastern one? The computations are different; the Western churches celebrate it this year on March 31, while the Eastern Orthodox churches have just started Lent and don’t celebrate Easter until May 5. How can we have a war against a holiday when they can’t decide when it is?

Is it really time for the war on Easter already? It feels like we just had this year’s war on Christmas. Can I still eat the chocolate bunnies after the war on Easter is won? Oh, I know. Chocolate squid!

Among my people, we don’t celebrate the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox. But the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Autumnal Equinox is honoured here in the following manner:
* Two days off work, yay!
* Bake and eat spicy fruit buns with lots of butter.
* Eat good chocolate.
* Have a feast with old friends.
* Dress in one’s finest feral hippy folky garb, and attend the national folk festival.
* Purchase more shiny colourful items of clothing & jewellery.
* Purchase CDs of some bands you just heard. (I lean to gypsy & klezmer but if Irish fiddle is your thing, go for it.)
* Drink lots of dark beer. Stout season is here!

As far as it relates to this discussion, from what I understand eastern christians do not celebrate “Easter” they celebrate “Pascha” and are down on the pagan connections with the western name. Which brings up back to… yeah- everyone is waging a war on Easter- even the other christians!

“I’ve instructed the disbursing agents to throw in a grab bag of psychedelic agents, as well as oxycontin and meth to keep the conservatives happy. Also, a coupon book for free abortions any time you want one!”

chigau, that’s OK, our seasonal holidays are kind of upside down here. I recognise the origin in European tradition. Actual pagans here tend to do the reversal. It’s not Ostara but Mabon or Lammas or something.

There is an interesting passage in Anthony Shaffer’s script for “The Wicker Man” (the 1973 version, not the remake), in which Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee) balks at being called a pagan but concedes he might be a heathen, suggesting a distinction in which “pagan” means “godless” but “heathen” means “old-god(s) worshipper” (i..e., pre-Christian). I imagine that fine distinction is quite lost today, even if it was ever dominant.

Sgt. Howie (Edward Woodward): He brought you up to be a pagan!
Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee): A heathen, conceivably, but not, I hope, an unenlightened one.

Bill’s version of traditionalism is under attack? The traditionalism that burned heretics at the stake? Ah, traditionalism (wotta uggggly wurd!), where is now thy sting?

Well, to be fair to Bill (not that he deserves that): If the traditionalism that burned heretics at the stake ruled, poor ol’ Billy would be there burning with us, considering all his talk about Easter bunnies…

My Very Catholic Sister-in-Law™ was mortified, mortified!, that my family won’t be attending her Easter brunch this year. Really, she knows we’re a bunch of atheists and she knows that I hate every single goddamned holiday†, so I have no idea what she expected.

Careful about the Eostre business. That’s based on one mention by the Venerable Bede, who wasn’t in a position to know. Germans call it “Ostern” and there’s no suggestion that that is linked to a goddess. The obvious surmise is that “East” is the referent.

I keep hoping that Easter will fall on April 1. “He is risen!” they proclaim. “Wow! Really?” we ask. They reply, of course, “April fools!”

Just when you think Billo couldn’t get any dumber, he surprises you. He is always lowering the bar, but I doubt that he is good at limbo. Both the woman and Billo lie. Haven’t they heard of Robert Ingersoll who in the 19th century was very popular for saying many more mean things about religion, particularly Xianity? The U.S. is going to become weaker and lose its empire because of secularism? Who is going to replace it? China, that well known country of the faithful. Furthermore, Europe seems to be dealing with its problems, but could do better if it weren’t for the bad influence of the U.S. bank Goldman-Sachs, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. All of which favor corporate domination..

How much aid has the U.S. given to Mali where the French went in to destroy the terrorists and keep them from taking over the country?

You can always tell what it’s about from the wrap-up in the last ten seconds. The bottom line in this one was, we need to pack the benches with “better judges” and get public leaders and christians out spreading the good word. Cuz, ya know, we live in a christian nation. Jefferson said so.

I was also amused by O’Reilly’s statement that “Easter is a good holiday, you don’t have to believe in Jesus…”

You don’t have to believe in Jesus, but you should pretend to. So that everybody is on the same page and no one gets uncomfortable. Except you. Because you don’t believe in Jesus. But you don’t have to believe in Jesus!

I’m pretty sure that it is a Christian festival in origin. It just happens to be that the English name for the festival comes from the Old English name for the month in which it occured, which (according to Bede) was named after a pagan goddess.

As someone living in Scandinavia and having visited the US it’s odd to hear it used as a threat. One would think it would be invoked as a place to go if you behave good for 10 years, sort of like heaven. At least by comparison